Is the Pere Marquette River a total jerk?
By Andy McGlashen • January 31, 2012
Photo: U.S. Forest Service
Remember last April, when Field & Stream Magazine’s Kirk Deeter said in a blog post that Michigan is the top state in the country for fly-fishing? And how we all called our friends and relatives in Montana and Colorado and New York, and asked them how it felt to be such a loser?
Well, Michigan landed on another Deeter list yesterday, but don’t reach for the phone just yet.
This time the blogger compiled what he calls the rudest trout rivers in America. And ranking way higher than we Michiganders might like–second only to the famous Henry’s Fork of the Snake River in Idaho–was our own Pere Marquette River.
Before I’d given the list a careful read, I took that to mean that visitors to the P.M. are likely to encounter anglers swearing at each other, ruining others’ fishing and throwing beer cans at canoeists.
Balderdash! Blasphemy! Surely Deeter isn’t disparaging the plainspoken, hard-working, god-fearing fisherfolk of the Great Lake State!
No, as a closer look at the list reveals, he isn’t. Deeter’s talking about the rivers themselves, not the people who fish them. He points to the P.M.’s fly-stealing stumps and its unpredictable insect hatches as evidence of the river’s rudeness.
As he puts it, “some rivers don’t give a rip who you are, where you’re from, how good you are, or what you paid to get there.”
Now that sounds like the Michigan I know and love, and I’ll take this as another compliment. I might even call my out-of-state friends to tell them I don’t give a rip who they are.
As someone who has been on the Pere Marquette since 1944, and a current property owner, I have seen the River go steadily down hill. Today’s Guides anchor in the Middle of the stream, almost making passage impossible. I have all to frequently seen them “claim” a stretch for hours. Flip Pallets recent TV Show on the PM even told how his fishing companions do this.
The Rogue River type of craft has a mega footprint. They need to float down the River in deeper water, ruining the fishing for anyone wading. The old Guide Boats of the late Simmy Nolph and Jess McDougle, could easily be poled around another fisherman. We won’t even get into the canoe issues. I have watched Guide’s scream at folks who are “in the way’ or fishing”their water”. I’d be happy mention their names. I’ve also witnessed the cover that Simmy placed all down the Fly’s Only, removed by Guides because Clients lost fly’s and complained. These same Guide’s regularly chain sawed out new fallen trees for the same reasons. (At least that has abated recently.) We who fish fro trout are now forced to fish at dawn and dusk. Sadly, our beloved River has become part of the “New Normal”.